"By selling all the remaining Citigroup shares today, we had an opportunity to lock in substantial profits for the taxpayer and avoid future risk," said Tim Massad, the Treasury official who heads up the bailout program.

"With this transaction, we have advanced our goals of recovering TARP funds, protecting the taxpayer and getting the government out of the business of owning stakes in private companies," Massad said in a statement.

'Milestone'
Citigroup received $45 billion in taxpayer support late in 2008 in one of the largest bank rescues as the government struggled to contain the worst financial crisis to hit the country since the 1930s.

"Citi is pleased that the U.S. Department of the Treasury has finalized plans to exit from its remaining holdings of Citigroup common stock. We are very appreciative of the support provided by the Treasury during the financial crisis," Citigroup spokesman Jon Diat said in a statement.

Linus Wilson, a finance professor at University of Louisiana at Lafayette, told the newspaper the government's sales strategy had been a success. "They took a risk by not selling early or selling too much at once," he said.

The move to sell the remaining shares in one large offering follows last month's successful initial public offering in General Motors Corp, which significantly reduced the government's stake.

The government put $49.5 billion into GM as part of its bailout of the giant automaker. Last week, Treasury announced it had received an additional $1.8 billion in net proceeds from the sale of GM stock, bringing the total it has received from an initial public offering of GM stock to $13.5 billion.

The Treasury is expected to begin selling off its stake in bailed-out insurer American International Group next year, and it anticipates a profit on the complex series of transactions.

George Ball, chairman and chief executive of boutique money manager Sanders Morris Harris Group, told The Wall Street Journal the Citigroup sell-off marked "a winding down" of the overall bailout. "Subsequent sales of government stock in banks will be much less important, viewed as objects in the rearview mirror rather than important benchmarks," he said.

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Ball added that the bank was now "a simpler and more predictable animal, and that is very important to survivability."

The bailout of Citigroup and other large banks was begun under the Republican administration of George W. Bush, but turned into a major political liability for President Barack Obama in last month's congressional elections.

Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and gained six seats in the Senate by capitalizing on voter anger over the bailouts and soaring federal budget deficits.

The administration has insisted that the bailouts were needed to prevent an even deeper recession.

TARP to cost $25 billion
They said the cost of the bailouts has been falling as Citigroup and other rescued institutions pay back their government loans.

The latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office in late November was that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program would end up costing the government $25 billion, down from an August CBO estimate of $66 billion.

Of the $45 billion in taxpayer support provided to Citigroup, $25 billion was converted to a government ownership stake that the Treasury has been selling off since last spring. The bank repaid the other $20 billion in December 2009.

Treasury said that with the pricing of the last 2.4 billion shares of common stock on Monday, it would receive $31.8 billion from the sale of common stock plus another $2.9 billion in interest and dividends.

The $57 billion total also includes $20 billion from Citigroup's December 2009 repayment of TARP money and another $2.2 billion from the sale of trust preferred securities held by the government.

The sale, however, does not completely free Citigroup from the government's clutches. The Treasury also said it would continue to hold warrants to purchase Citigroup shares issued as part of the bailout. These may be repurchased by Citigroup or sold in a separate auction for an additional profit.

The actual earnings are expected to climb with the sale of an additional $800 million in trust preferred securities held by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the sale of the warrants.